Fashionable Niqab

       On Friday morning I had an appointment with my social worker. When one checks in at the reception desk one receives an electronic paging device with a screen. When your worker is ready for you it beeps and the screen displays the number of the booth where one has to direct oneself. I wonder how much money they spent on that system and how much they think they would save from the extra two minutes it would take for the worker to just walk out and say, “Mr Christian? It’s nice to see you! Let’s go talk in booth 13!” I told the receptionist that those pagers are the stupidest idea they’ve ever had, She said, “I agree with you one hundred percent!”

       I asked my worker for some extra money to buy a bedbug cover for the futon on my couch, since I see bedbugs there sometimes. She said that I’d have to put my request in the form of a letter that says how much I need and what I need it for. I wonder how long such a cover would last with my cats going on it though.

       I also asked her why they have such an expensive paper wasting system. About a year ago they started sending out, on a monthly basis, two forms on legal size paper, each of which are blank on one side. The forms used to be printed on both sides of a letter size page. One of the forms is a change of information form, which I never need to fill out, and so it becomes a wasted piece of paper, other than scrap for me to write on. I suggested that they have an online option, which would save them tens of thousands of dollars. She said she has no idea why they brought in the paper wasting system, but she told me that there is a plan in the works, though it will be several years down the road, to move to an online system.

       That evening, as I was riding up Brock Avenue, there was an orange tabby cat standing on the road, just off the sidewalk, whipping it’s tail indecisively while it gazed down the driveway to the beer store. There was an electric scooter leaving the Beer Store, so maybe the feline was waiting for it to leave so it could head behind the building and look for mice that have been living off spilled beer from broken bottles.

       Just south of Dundas there was a woman standing with arms folded, looking down at a man who was sitting on the sidewalk and looking up at her. His face had a crying expression, though I didn’t see any tears, as he said to her, “Do you think I’m happy?”

       I rode to Yonge and St Clair and then further east to explore the streets from St Clair to Heath and between Inglewood and Mt Pleasant. All the streets have these little concrete barriers that causes east-west streets to zig or zag north and south and north-south streets to do the same to the east and west.

       For the first time in four bike rides I didn’t have to pee before leaving that area. I rode down Yonge to Bloor and headed west. I walked across to the south east corner of Queens Park and Bloor, and I was crossing to the west side while a Muslim couple were crossing with their two children. They were fairly young but it looked like they were wealthy. The woman was wearing a niqab that covered everything but her eyes but it seemed to be made of or covered with dark lace, rather than just the usual black cloth. Their two little girls were not yet of an age when they would need to cover their faces and so they were decked out in bright, colourful, expensive little girl dresses and both had big pink bows in their hair. I would think that a woman with a strong aesthetic who is compelled by her culture to cover up her face would probably, in a fashion sense, live vicariously through her children for as long she can. All I could see were her eyes, but I think I detected her eyes smiling with pleasure as I looked at her.

       After I got home, I got a call from someone doing a survey relating to the election. I told her that I’ve been voting Green for the last few decades but the last time I voted Liberal it was for Pierre Elliot Trudeau, so out of nostalgia I might vote Liberal this time around. She asked if I thought that the other candidates were all competent politicians. I said that as politicians go they are all competent, including Stephen Harper. To me it’s more a matter of being interesting than competent. 

       I looked out my window and there were four cops questioning and searching a middle aged guy of East Indian descent. I think I recognized the guy as being from the Caribbean, perhaps Guyana, and being a bit of a drunk. I don’t know what he did, if anything, to warrant the hassle, but that’s a lot of cops being paid good tax money to waste their time on one obnoxious drunk. I watched them for a while through my binoculars. The cops were the kind with the more casual uniform one sees a lot of these days. There were three men and one woman, all in black with baseball caps and the word police written across the back of their t-shirts. One of them had a shaved head and would often take off his cap for a second before placing it back on his dome. After they let the guy go they all piled into a little unmarked vehicle and drove off.

       I watched an interesting episode of Bonanza, starring Stella Stevens as a deaf and dumb girl who Joe takes it upon himself to teach sign language, against resistance at first from her father. The episode was directed by Robert Altman.